Blogging notes

You may have noticed the schedule change. I’m blogging at night. I decided life is easier to just publish the night before instead of future dating posts. This won’t really affect you, even if 98% of you read from work. You just won’t be the first to know.

Also, still really busy but enjoying myself very much. The blog reading has suffered so if I’ve not blogged about that thing you sent me, means I probably haven’t read it yet. Them’s the breaks.

Junior started third grade and The Second started first. They grow up fast.

I love little baby ducks.

I think my body is used to long days in the heat. I no longer eat like a horse but . . .

Until recently, I bet the last time I had a Mountain Dew was over a decade ago. Just never cared much for them. Now, I crave them and have one a day. Not sure if it’s the sugar I’m craving or what but they hit the spot. Especially the Throwback with real sugar.

I have learned to drive a Bobcat. Poorly. But at least I haven’t run anything over. Up next, learning to haul a big ass trailer.

When maneuvering huge ass trailer, its helpful to think about hinge points. The most important point is the hitch point, the furthest out you can get that into the intersection, the better. Also, in reverse, dont think as pulling, think as pushing. I find that mindset helpful. Also, Bobcats are awesome. And fun.

I can sympathize with the blogging schedule. Right now I am working, as I find happens often with working from home. Sometimes shit comes up during the day, and I have to work at night.

As for the Mt. Dew… being on the low carb diet, I find when I get active, it’s at that point I want to mug someone for some fucking carbs. I think when you’re doing more physical work, you need the cheap energy only carbs provide. When your sedentary, like I am most of the time, your body can afford to do some work to make energy.

I got to tow the 30″ theater-trailer full of scenery from Santa Maria down 101 to Solvang a few times, driving the dually-Ford. That was fun until you had to back-up down the narrow side street to make the 3-point-turn into the theater! We drank Pepsi though.

Find an empty parking lot, lay out your traffic cones (you DO have some, right?) to outline parking stalls, and practice backing into them from various angles, and around obstacles. You need the cones to give you spacial cues you don’t get with just the painted lines. Doing it in the real world, you have real objects to work with.

Don’t forget to practice driving around cones to get a feel for how the trailer follows and swings.

Given enough practice in a wide open, blue-law closed-on-Sundays parking lot, “anyone” (term used advisedly) can learn to back a trailer. One gets into trouble, as in so many things in life, when one changes from one trailer to another.

A difference in hitch type, tongue length!, number of axles, or wheel location radically changes the way a trailer steers in reverse. Given a reasonable weight distribution, any (again, advisedly) trailer will follow you down the road. But they sure as hell won’t push back the same. I learned this by reading, quietly and harmlessly, in the comfort of my own cab. Do not ask how the lesson was so firmly imprinted.

Just remember driving a truck is fun. As for backing, take your time and pay attention and you’ll do ok. It’s not a race. Unless you’re driving an r model with 5 reverse gears. That was FUN! I nearly got fired, but I won! @comatus I got my start with coe internationals and r models.